James Anthony "Jim" Redden Jr. (born March 13, 1929) is a judge and politician from the U.S. state of Oregon. Since 1980, he has served as a District Court Judge for the United States District Court for the District of Oregon; he took Senior Status in 1995.[1] Before appointment to the bench, he was a trial attorney, and a career Democratic politician, serving as a legislator and in two of the state's constitutional offices, Treasurer[2] and Attorney General.[3] As a politician, he was a key figure in some of Oregon's most groundbreaking legislative initiatives, including brokering the deal which brought passage of the state's 1967 public beach access law.[1] Many of the cases he has heard in his quarter of a century on the federal bench gained national attention, often sparking controversy, including his dismissal of the 1975 guns and ammunition charges against American Indian Movement leader Dennis Banks,[4] and his more recent 2005 and 2006 decisions halting the Bush administration's plans to reduce spillway flows on the Columbia and Snake rivers, flows which environmentalists and indigenous tribes have criticized as devastating to the salmon runs.[5][6][7] The federal courthouse in Medford, Oregon, where he practiced law for 17 years,[1] was renamed by an Act of Congress in his honor.[8] He and his wife, Joan, make their home in Beaverton, Oregon and have two adult sons: Jim, a reporter for the Portland Tribune, and Bill, a public defender.

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During the days of the Great Depression, Jim Redden was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, the third child of James A. Redden, Sr., a dentist, and his wife, Alma. He spent his early childhood in their home on Bronson Terrace at the Eastern edge of Forest Park, where for a time, his father also maintained his dental office[9]

During what he would later describe as a "mediocre" high school career,[10] Redden enlisted in the Army in 1946,[11] as World War II was coming to an end, serving two years as a PFC in occupied Japan.[1] He was assigned as a hospital medic, and witnessed the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima firsthand.[1]

After discharge from the service, he married his high school sweetheart, Joan Johnson, in 1951,[1] and he took several low-end jobs, including working coding survey sheets for the Gillette Razor Company,[10] but managed not only to earn a belated high school diploma, but went on to Boston College and its School of Law, graduating with an LL.B. in 1954, and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar the same year.[1]

After engaging in the private practice of law in Massachusetts for only a year, the young attorney moved with his wife and young sons to Portland, Oregon in 1955 to take the Oregon State Bar exam and a position with a title insurance company. His work as a title examiner lasted only one year, followed by an equally brief tenure as a claims adjuster for Allstate Insurance Company.[11] Neither position satisfied what he would later describe as a growing passion for the law, and particularly as it plays out in the courtroom.[1]

Redden and his family would make their home for the next seventeen years in Medford, Oregon, where he built a law practice. He became immersed in politics, quickly becoming regarded as one of the Democratic Party's "rising stars."[1]

It was as a favor to a friend seeking a challenger to the incumbent Republican for the 19th District in the Oregon House of Representatives, that Redden entered his first political race in 1962.[7] He won the race, and served for six years in the House, becoming the party Minority Leader in 1967.[12]

In 1969, Redden moved to the executive branch, becoming chairman of the Public Employee Relations Board until 1972. From 1973 to 1976, he was the state treasurer, and from 1977 to 1980 he was the attorney general of Oregon.